Spying on the left: 20th century “dirt files”

An article in the Herald on Sunday reports on some newly released files have been declassified, and made available for public viewing at Archives NZ in Wellington. I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere, but the article includes some bits of information that I didn’t know about before.

Newly declassified files from the Security Intelligence Service show secret police spied on future Labour Prime Ministers in the 1920s who were suspected of having Communist sympathies.

The SIS has released thousands of pages of secret files on Michael Joseph Savage, Peter Fraser and Walter Nash from a spying operation on the Labour Party in the 1920s and 30s. The spies were amassing dirt files on the men who would later become their political masters.

Their personal files were destroyed, but other Special Branch and World War II Security Intelligence Bureau files recorded between 1920 and 1945 have been transferred to Archives New Zealand.

A personal file was located on Auckland’s longest-serving mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, a four-times married Communist Party member, whose reign as mayor spanned four decades and who was the subject of a 2012 biography.

It shows a severe lack in my historical knowledge, that I hadn’t previously been aware that Sir Dove Meyer was a Communist Party member.

I did know that it’s Auckland’s great loss that Dove Meyer’s rapid rail plan was never implemented – so now we have a city of cars and gridlock. (See TeAra’s biography on him).

Back to Hurley’s article. I was a little shocked to see the extent of the NZ establishment fears of the left back in the first half of the 20th century. This seems to be something our media, and some other dominant sectors in NZ still perpetuate.

Walter Nash, Prime Minister from 1957-60, was spied on at Irish Republican meetings and for importing “seditious literature” from Australia.

His great-grandson Stuart Nash, Labour Party candidate for Napier in the upcoming election, said there had been anti-left wing paranoia because of the “spectre of Stalin”.

“I would doubt they found any direct links to [Josef] Stalin in there.”

SIS files on Bill Sutch, who was accused and acquitted of espionage in 1974, were released in 2008.

The Special Branch was set up in 1920 “to investigate and report on revolutionary matters in New Zealand”, its main target being the Communist Party of New Zealand.

Te Ara has a photo of Sutch arriving at the Wellington magistrates court in October 1974, with his wife, Shirley Smith, and his lawyer Mike Bungay (right). From Te Ara.

It’s sobering to see how long our intelligence services have been treating as enemies within, people who have been working hard to make a more fair and livable society.

It’s not surprising then, that many good-hearted Kiwis are becoming increasingly concerned about the secret practices of our GCSB, SIS and police surveillance services.

Hopefully, the next left/progressive government will organise a thorough review of our intelligence services. And, when doing so, reflect on how such services have been mobilised against Labour politicians and party members in past times.

John Key’s unfulfilled assurance to Peter Dunne for a review of the SIS and GCSB operations after the passage of the GCSB legislation is the focus of the latest in the “Hey Peter!” billboard campaign in the Ohariu electorate.

[…]

Peter Dunne had defended his change from opposition to the Government’s controversial GCSB spying legislation to support for the Bill as the result of a deal with prime minister John Key – “willing seller – willing buyer”.

56 comments on “Spying on the left: 20th century “dirt files””

That article gives such an insight into the nefarious thoughts and actions of the right wing establishment who seem to be there to look after the interests of the wealthy and not the interests of the ordinary people and those that they term as the ‘underclass’.

The alleged IRS interference in the US Tea Party is widely understood to amount to nothing more than a anti Obama conspiracy that gained traction in the right wing echo chamber. Numerous federal investigations found no evidence substantiating the claims made by the right wing media outlets.

It is intriguing that some of this stuff escaped the shredder. NZSIS trumpeted “openness” several years back but most people I know that applied for their files just boosted thick black marker sales. Under the 1969 and 1977 Acts the SIS has obligations to protect its employees and informants identities, particularly living ones, over the wish of the spied upon to know what the service holds on them.

One wonders also what the state security apparatus role, and the US role, was during Norm Kirk’s period as Labour leader and brief term as Prime Minister from 1972 till his early death in office aged 51 in 1974. As I said here once before the circumstances of his death remain rather mysterious despite his recorded poor health and tendency to overwork. Maybe the best medical care was reserved for people not pushing an independent foreign policy.

The vast bulk of NZ communists were united in one party, the NZCP, from the 1920s to the late 1950s, a main organisational expression of the Sino-Soviet split occurring in 1966 with the formation of the Socialist Unity Party as well as various trotskyite tendencies and sects in that period.

Prior to the formation of the NZSIS, NZ Police Special Branch handled paid informants who were planted in the NZCP. One was there at branch executive level for nine years and wrote a book about his experience. “Seeing Red-Undercover in 1950s New Zealand” by George Fraser, Dunmore Press 1995, ISBN 0-86469-255-2. The cast of characters is a whos who of the NZ left. Of course in the end Fraser was left high and dry, life in tatters and he had come to the conclusion that most party members were in fact genuinely motivated New Zealanders not subversives.

Given that recent Green MP Keith Locke and other of his family members were snooped on for most of their lives one can make an educated guess who else is top of NSA/SIS/GCSB rankings.
More so with the new economic focus of the trenchcoat brigade.

Yep. I suspect they kept an eye on my grandmother who was a long-time activist on the Left of the Labour Party early-1920s to mid-1960s at the Wellington Regional level and a friend of Walter Nash, Jack Lewin, various Labour MPs and Bill Sutch and his wife Shirley Smith. She was also active in the often dominant Left faction of the PSA in the 40s and 50s – a faction that conservative (often Catholic) sections of the PSA tried to smear as Communist (mirroring what happened in Australia with the conservative-Catholic Democratic Labor Party). Yep, we certainly had our own little version of McCarthyism going on down here through the late 40s-50s.

The first head of the SIS, in particular, was an absolute nutter of the Reds-Under-the-Bed variety – former military officer Brigadier William (Bill) Gilbert. He believed that half the Labour Party were closet Commies and dangerous subversives. And, interestingly enough, he’s the main source for right-wing journo Graeme Hunt’s highly predictable hatchet-job on Sutch and others in his utterly paranoid, red-baiting Spies and Revolutionaries: A History of New Zealand Subversion. Hunt takes an entirely uncritical stance towards Gilbert’s various claims about Sutch, Jack Lewin and others – not so much the work of a professional historian as an inherently-ideological NBR hack.

Like his equally fatuous whitewash of the absolutely bloody appalling Fintan Patrick Walsh (grounded largely in testimony from Walsh’s adoring daughter), this was part of a series that might be termed the National Business Review version of New Zealand history. Wait until most of the people who knew them are dead and then write either an outrageous whitewash (if they’re conservative and big business-friendly) or an equally outrageous hatchet-job (if they happened to challenge establishment interests in any shape or form).

Be assured that it was not only members of the Labour Party who were subjected to spying and witch hunts in the 50s, 60s and the 70s. Some of the children of these ‘victims’ were similarly treated for no reason other than who they were. My father, who was an old friend and campaign manager for the late Warren Freer in the 1950s, ended up being subjected to some very grubby tactics from certain sections of the establishment and not all of them were NZ citizens. That is another story. In the 70s, 80s (and even the early 90s) it spilled over into my life and I suffered a similar ordeal. In my case, the situation was exacerbated by the information finding its way into what I can only describe here as “the wrong hands”.

Many lives and careers were destroyed during those decades and no government since has ever had the guts to stand up and apologise to the innocent individuals who were wrongfully subjected to improper surveillance – and related activities – in what in my view is still the relatively recent past.

“I did know that it’s Auckland’s great loss that Dove Meyer’s rapid rail plan was never implemented – so now we have a city of cars and gridlock. (See Te Ara’s biography on him).”

Thanks for that Karol
Sir Dove Myer a COMMUNISTS. That is total and complete bullshit, in fact the very small dealings I had with him I thought he would have been quite the opposite. However, not surprised that he has been labelled a communist as he made quite a few enemies when he was against the Browns Island sewage scheme.
The 1% want to remember or be reminded, when they on their luxury yacht’s sipping a glass of Monet in the gulf, off Browns Island, it is through the actions of this great man they are not sailing in shit

Well, the NZ Herald article linked to in my post, claims Robinson had been a memeber of the Communist Party (not something I see as negative). And I’ve found a few other online sources that say that, including a couple of books on google books.

Saying that someone was a member of the CPNZ is not an insult, or even necissarily a criticism.

A longtime member of the Auckland CPNZ told me that Robinson had been a member, he was told this by people who had been members at the time. I’m guessing that this would have been in the 1930s, or possibly during the war, when the Party’s membership was at its highest.

To be a member of the Party at this time was to believe that capitalism was an unjust, exploitative and crisis prone system, which couldn’t be reformed, but could be overthrown by the working class, led by a well organised Communist Party. Party members believed this is what had happened in Russia. While the capitalist world was producing Depression and Fascism, Russia was supposedly forging a new and better world. Some of this is factually wrong, some, in my view is as true today as it was then.

I wonder if it’s one of those [imagine with me for a moment]…
…
Joined the NZCP in 1921 when it was first formed, at age 19, and lapsed after a year or so. Then got on with a normal capitalist life before entering local politics 25 years later in his late 40’s (in the late 1940’s). Forever now to be remembered as a communist… not that there’s anything wrong with that ; )

I had long seen Robinson as being pretty conservative and “establishment”.

He was karol. Like a lot of young people of that generation, he probably flirted with the idea of Communism (remember no-one knew in those days what was going on inside Russia), joined the party for a gig and then dropped out a year or two later. No different to the long haired protestors of the 60s and 70s who dabbled in drugs and protested… then later on became ‘responsible’ establishment citizens. Phil Goff was one of them.

Oh gawd, suffered from a large attack of SOS. Just re read what I had written. I better attend a charter school for some English lessons.

It should have read, “That was total and complete bullshit by whoever wrote the report” I apologise Karol for the way it was written, I did not mean to apply that you said it. Also Monet should read Moet
Definitely a major senior moment.

In those days anyone who had any imagination or innovative ideas were automatically suspected of being a Communist. The flat headed philistines who ran our state services were blind to reality and steeped in prejudice and bigotry. I suspect one of Sir Dove Myer’s crimes was being of Jewish descent.

Here’s an example of how unbelievably stupid they were:

My late mother belonged to “the School of Philosophy” whose premises are in Mt Eden. It was an off-shoot of the British School of Philosophy, and a more sedate, dignified, middle-class group of people you could not find anywhere. I understand Rowan Atkinson was involved in the British School of Philosophy at one time.
In the 1970s they came under suspicion as some sort of front for a communist backed (read KGB?) grouping.

Don’t bother with the Whanganui computer. Is it still in existence? There was bugger all on those files apart from a few speeding tickets. I did that in the 90s. And you won’t get anything out of the State Services. I contacted several agencies for information or assistance from them to gather information and I was fobbed off by all of them.

In a “true democracy” indeed. Even in ancient Athens, the so-called home of democracy, slaves had no vote. And neither did the peoples and territories the ancient greeks subjugated throughout the Mediterranean.

It’s oddly self serving isn’t it that the power elite and their institutions want to know everything about what you are doing and what you are thinking, but yet they want you to know absolutely nothing about what they are doing and what they are thinking.

And that discrepancy is usually attributed by them to the need for “security” and “confidentiality” (theirs of course, not ours).

And regardless of that, “election day” is just one day out of a thousand in a 3 year term.

Accountability of those with power, ability for ordinary voices to be heard, opportunities for real alternatives to be freely discussed, that’s 99% of what democracy is (should be) about. Voting is a necessary, but very small, part of a true liberal democratic society.

The irony re-Walter Nash is: he was as anti-Communist as they come yet they still spied on him. In the 1950s, Warren Freer (MP for Mt. Albert for 34 years and former cabinet minister) made a trip to China. He was the first Western politician who was brave enough to go to China after the advent of the Communist State. He did so because he saw an opportunity for trade between NZ and China and he’d gone to suss out the lay of the land. The trip had not been officially sanctioned of course, and when he returned he was exposed to allegations of communist activities. Walter Nash wanted him expelled from the Labour Party and he was generally ostracised by his political colleagues. I remember my father talking about it in the 60s. He understood what Freer was attempting to do and he was livid with rage over the treatment meted out to Freer as a consequence of his trip.

The eventual outcome of that visit – and several subsequent visits by Freer- was that New Zealand was the first Western nation with whom China conducted and sealed an official trade deal. Sadly, in his lifetime, Warren Freer was never fully acknowledged as having been the inspiration behind China choosing NZ to conduct their first ever deal.

Yeah, I remember my mother telling me something about that when I was studying Labour History at Uni back in the 90s. She mentioned a kerfuffle in the Labour Party over Warren Freer (she and my father didn’t actually become Party members until the mid 70s, but – being her mother’s daughter – she always kept herself well-informed about various Labour and Left activities).

Auckland had some very impressive Left-leaning/Progressive Labour MPs – Freer, Isbey, and – ironically enough, Roger Douglas’s father. Some of Wellington’s Labour MPs – Peter Fraser, Bob Semple and Nash tended towards either the conservative end of the spectrum (Fraser and particularly Semple moving into red-baiting territory after the Second World War, having both, of course, been fairly fiery Red Feds in their youth) or, at least, towards a kind of establishment orthodoxy on economics (Nash).

Although my grandmother was very much to the Left of Nash generally, she saw him as the most liberal (of Labour’s 1930s/40s/50s leadership) on feminist issues like Equal Pay and on a moral, liberal-internationalist foreign policy and so on. As it turned out, however, the Nash-led Second Labour Government was quite conservative on a range of issues. He was enthusiastic about Equal Pay for women when in Opposition but a little lukewarm once in power. He also, of course, was instrumental in ensuring the highly controversial All Black Tour of Apartheid South Africa went ahead in 1960, despite criticism from many of his own MPs and important sections of the Union movement.

Probably the over-arching explanation for the general conservatism (and this also possibly explains his on-going attempts to expel Freer) was his/Labour’s acute sensitivity to public opinion in the context of the ugly Cold War Red Scare rhetoric that reached its peak during the 15 or so years immediately following WWII*. That sort of climate of fear led to a good deal of conservatism and timidity from Social Democratic Parties throughout Western Liberal Democracies. Which, of course, was exactly what the Right wanted.

Doesn’t, however, even remotely excuse what happened to Freer. Or to your father and, ultimately, even to you yourself.

(although in terms of the 1960 Tour, it was, of course, much more to do with fear of an electoral backlash from a Rugby-loving New Zealand. But they received a backlash against the so-called Black Budget anyway so it probably wouldn’t have made much difference either way).

Fascinating stuff karol and thanks too, to Tiger Mountain, Swordfish and Anne for further history.

It seems that leaders and people of the left are spied upon in arguably equal amounts to the oppression and violence that gets meted out by the authorities towards the same people, throughout our history and up the the present time.

You can’t help but think of victims of the Police and of the right in relation to the power imbalance between right and left and spying and freedom. Freedom to pursue something so simple as the equality of power and all that comes with that equality.

Fred Evans, killed during the miner’s strike in Waihi, 1912

Two of Rua Kenana’s followers (can’t remember their names and no time to search as I’m out the door soon but I think one was one of Rua’s sons) killed by police during the raids on Maungapohatu, 1916.

The western intelligence services for the most part don’t want to conduct censorship of forums like this.

Their ability to collect information about people, identify their social networks and categorise them into levels of interest/levels of threat relies on commentators and posters being able to state their views freely and hence reveal their opinions and activities.

I think it should be pointed out that a lot of the spying and other activities were conducted by the Special Branch of the Police Force which was the forerunner of the SIS. When the SIS took over from the police it was assumed the Special Branch ceased to exist. They didn’t – at least not for a decade or so. Most of the “flat-headed philistines” I referred to earlier were members of that Special Branch.

I’m sure I heard John Key refer to the GCSB as “my agency” a few weeks back. As evidence that he views the GCSB as a tool to use whenever and for whatever he likes, that is anecdotal, but important. The biggest indicator that his office spies on opposition and ally alike is the saga around the Peter Dunne emails to Andrea Vance. John Key and his office think nothing of this sort of stuff and neither do his followers.

That reminds me of Rob Muldoon and the SIS. He definitely regarded the spy agency as HIS agency. On the surface they appear to be different – and that might have a lot to do with the difference in the time periods – but there are many similarities between Muldoon and Key.

The confusion over Robinson possibly reflects the difficulty of disentangling the social democratic and the Marxist left, when the history of major protest movements and strikes is told. There’s often a tendency to downplay the contribution of the smaller and more radical organisations of the left, when the story of the left is told. At the last general election Labour aired an advertisement which began with a reasonably detailed account of the party’s history, and of the history of the party’s links to various progressive protest movements. Although it was great to see Labour talking about history, and the party certainly was correct to claim that its grassroots members were involved in many of these protest movements, the narrative the advertisement offered systematically excluded organisations which sat to the left of Labour on the political spectrum, like the Communist Party and its various avatars:http://readingthemaps.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/labours-history-lesson.html

Up until the formation of the Labour Party in 1915, and in some cases after that, people like Harry Holland, Peter Frazer and M J Savage were committed to overthrowing not just the government, but the entire capitalist system. Walter Nash, seems to have been more of a reformist, however, he was imprisoned (not just spied on) for importing revolutionary socialist literature.

This had nothing to do with the “specter of Stalin”, who was little known outside Russia at the time, and everything to do with the fact that the working class in Aotearoa were becoming well organised and militant, with a minority becoming revolutionaries.

Because, as yet, there has been no revolution here, it is easy to dismiss those who fear it as “paranoid”, but any government is going to keep an eye on those (it suspects) want to overthrow it. Not taking the state’s fears seriously also does a disservice to the socialists and communists of the past, who were also serious (is at times over optimistic) about revolutionary social change.

Commies hiding from the authorities in a South Auckland, preparing smudged copies of their newspaper, which has been proscribed by a Labour government, and yet will soon be read by hundreds of workers at the Otahuhu workshops and the Southdown Freezing Works.

Or did they have Mao’s famous iniversity of the caves in mind? Or the plans of the thousands of Tainui men who refused to go to war in 1916 to hide from the New Zealand state in the porous country around Waitomo?

I suspect that relatively well-known Wiri Cave, which sits at the edge of soon-to-be-decommissioned Puhinui Quarry, is probably the best candidate. But I wonder whether the long shoreline of the nearby Puhinui Reserve might conceal something?

Wherever it is located, the cave in question quite probably has a place in NZ literary history, as well as in the history of the left. RAK Mason, who is considered one of our greatest poets, and is also remembered as a mentor to the young Hone Tuwhare, was very much involved, as an editor and I think also as a printer, with communist and labour movement publications during World War Two. When the Communist Party was once again legalised after the invasion of the Soviet Union changed its line on the war, Mason was made the editor of In Print, the paper the party published as a substitute for the still-banned People’s Voice. Was Mason hiding out in that cave, producing cyclostyled copies of the People’s Voice, during the fearful and repressive year of 1940?

A couple of other very notable figures in the history of the 1940s left, the young communist leader and writer Gordon Watson and the long-time party theoretician Sid Scott, were entrusted with the editorship of the underground People’s Voice, and may well have visited the mysterious South Auckland cave. Watson was killed by a fascist bullet in 1944; Scott turned against the party after the invasion of Soviet Hungary in 1956, and eventually became angrily and outspokenly anti-communist, writing letters to members of the Holyoake government demanding repressive measures against the Communist Party he had once led.

There are a couple of clues in Sid Scott’s writings that make me think he was possibly behind the decision to make the South Auckland cave a commie hideout, and that he may have spent some time there himself.

Late in his life, Scott wrote a very bad novel, which has never been published but can be read in manuscript at the University of Auckland library. The novel opens with a rapturous, long-winded description of an adventure in an enormous lava cave hidden under Auckland.

In his bitter but fascinating autobiography Rebel in a Wrong Cause, which was written after he had left the party, Scott mentions that his eyesight deteriorated at a very fast rate in the early ’40s, and says that he decided to visit the Waitomo Caves, a place he had long fantasised about, before it gave out altogether. At the end (I think) of 1942, Scott visited the famous King Country caves, and could just make out their glow worms from his seat in the dinghy that floated down the dark waters of Waitomo.

Don’t the passage in Scott’s unpublished novel and his journey to Waitomo together suggest a fascination with caves? Scott had long suffered from eye troubles, and had even travelled to the Soviet Union for help with them, but was the rapid decline in his eyesight in the early ’40s caused by the dust and dimness of that mysterious South Auckland cave?

If anyone can help with these rather speculative inquiries, do send me an e mail at shamresearch@yahoo.co.nz! If we can pin the Wiri Cave as the place where RAK Mason, not to mention other communists-turned-Kiwi icons like Hone Tuwhare and Elsie Locke, worked and plotted, then we can argue that it should be carefully husbanded by Auckland City Council, once the Puhinui Quarry closes, rather than simply blocked and forgotten.

Thanks for the link to the dancing cossacks piece. I haven’t seen it over the years, and had forgotten the extreme scare tactics played out in it.

Of course Labour left itself open to be scorned over its superannuation policy. It needed to recognise that with the new wave of women’s lib, and their enlightened, informed thinking about how the country’s economy treated women, they would not support a plan that left them out because it was based strictly on earnings. This would of course condemn women to extreme elderly poverty because of their non-earning time out of the workforce doing the important human role of having children and parenting them to adulthood, and beyond! Then there was the inability of mothers to get work and pay commensurate with their training, maturity and past experience, when they wished to re-enter the workforce. Then there was the well-known pay differential that still exists today where women pay national prices, out of specially lowered female wages that result from direct prejudice or social conditioning about females right for fair and equal pay. So Labour lost.

Labour now is persisting in pressing for a raising of ‘super’ to 67, a super that is gratefully received by many who have had difficulty finding living wage employment from perhaps their fifties. This could lead to another Labour loss.

People deserve better consideration from the supposedly people-supportive Left. But what they are getting is the purist authoritarian Left, as fixed in their thinking and narrow as either the dancing cossacks or the shameless feathernesters of the right.

Their type killed off the huia, a bird that had developed habits that were appropriate for its own benign environment, but facing the remoreseless colonialists had their homes cut down or burnt out. This was the approach with feisty Maori then also, and is being extended now, with a skewed equality, to us all.

Grey, you said so knowingly “Labour now is persisting in pressing for a raising of ‘super’ to 67, a super that is gratefully received by many who have had difficulty finding living wage employment from perhaps their fifties.”

I have often wondered what sort of intellectually vacuous idiot came up with this nonsense? The arithmetic is so blindingly obvious if you look at youth unemployment, later life unemployment etc that all this does is increase the dole queue somewhere. Who is the maestro who came up with this lame duck policy, and which half witted nonentities think this is worthy of support. Get them named, shamed and off the Labour list for being quite simple myopic and foolish.

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Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...

Eighteen months ago, the government promised to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act, by explicitly affirming the power of the courts to issue declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. So how's that going? I was curious, so I asked for all advice about the proposal. ...

As the Brexit saga staggers on, the focus is naturally enough on the Prime Minister and his attempts to achieve Brexit “do or die”. But the role played by the Leader of the Opposition is of almost equal interest and complexity. The first problem for Jeremy Corbyn is that he ...

Last week, English Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly declared that he would rather die be dead in a ditch than delay Brexit. Unfortunately for him, the UK parliament accepted the challenge, and promptly dug one for him. The "rebellion bill" requires him to ask for and secure yet another temporary ...

Lost In Political Space: The most important takeaway from this latest Labour sexual assault scandal, which (if I may paraphrase Nixon’s White House counsel’s, John Dean’s, infamous description of Watergate) is “growing like a cancer” on the premiership, is the Labour Party organisation’s extraordinary professional paralysis in the face of ...

by Daphna Whitmore Every Sunday for the past two months unionists from First Union, with supporters from other unions, have set out to the Ihumatao land protest, put up gazebos and gas barbeques, and cooked food for a few hundred locals and supporters who have come from across the country. ...

Newsroom today has an excellent, in-depth article on pine trees as carbon sinks. The TL;DR is that pine is really good at soaking up carbon, but people prefer far-less efficient native forests instead. Which is understandable, but there's two problems: firstly, we've pissed about so long on this problem that ...

Canan Kaftancioglu is a Turkish politician and member of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Like most modern politicians, she tweets, and uses the platform to criticise the Turkish government. She has criticised them over the death of a 14-year-old boy who was hit by a tear gas grenade during ...

Hi there, just call me Tim.We face tough problems, and I’d like to help, because there are solutions.An Auckand District Health Board member has nominated me for as a candidate for the ADHB, because her MS-related pain and fatigue is reduced with hemp products from Rotorua. Nothing else helped her. If I ...

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has published their report on whether the SIS and GCSB had any complicity in American torture. And its damning. The pull quote is this:The Inquiry found both agencies, but to a much greater degree, the NZSIS, received many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who, ...

Bewhiskered Cassandra? Professor Hugh White’s chilling suggestion, advanced to select collections of academic, military and diplomatic Kiwi experts over the course of the past week, is that the assumptions upon which Australia and New Zealand have built their foreign affairs and defence policies for practically their entire histories – are ...

For most of the time I was a British MP, my party was out of government – these were the Thatcher years, when it was hard for anyone else to get a look-in. As a front-bencher and shadow minister, I became familiar with the strategies required in a parliamentary democracy ...

by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh On August 29th a video in which veteran FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) commander Iván Márquez announced that they had taken up arms again was released. There was no delay in the reaction to it, from longtime Liberal Party figure and former president Uribe, for ...

Air New Zealand couldn’t believe its luck that this seemingly ideal piece of real estate had so far gone entirely unnoticed. Air New Zealand’s search for a site to build a second Auckland Airport may have made a breakthrough this afternoon, after employees scanning Google satellite imagery spotted a huge, ...

No-one on the anti-capitalist left in this country today puts forward a case that Labour is on the side of the working class. There are certainly people who call themselves ‘socialist’ who do, but they are essentially liberals with vested interests in Labourism – often for career reasons. Nevertheless, there ...

When National was in government and fucking over the poor for the benefit of the rich, foodbanks were a growth industry. And now Labour is in charge, nothing has changed: A huge demand for emergency food parcels means the Auckland City Mission is struggling to prepare for the impending arrival ...

Gayford, pictured here on The Project, before things got wildly out of control. A bold public relations move by the Government to encourage parents to vaccinate their children has gone horribly wrong. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appeared on tonight’s episode of Three’s The Project, where the plan was for her ...

Mr. Whippy’s business model has driven it down a dark road of intimidation. Residents in major centres around the country are becoming disgruntled by the increasingly aggressive actions of purported ice cream company Mr. Whippy, who have taken to parking on people’s front lawns and doorsteps in a desperate attempt ...

Today the government released its Action Plan for Healthy Waterways, aimed at cleaning up our lakes and rivers. Its actually quite good. There will be protection for wetlands, better standards for swimming spots, a requirement for continuous improvement, and better standards for wastewater and stormwater. But most importantly, there's a ...

Today I appeared before the Environment Committee to give an oral submission on the Zero Carbon Bill. Over 1,500 people have asked to appear in person, so they've divided into subcommittees and are off touring the country, giving people a five minute slot each. The other submitters were a mixed ...

Anti-fluoride activists have some wealthy backers – they are erecting billboards misrepresenting the Canadian study on many New Zealand cities – and local authorities are ordering their removal because of their scaremongering. Many New Zealanders ...

So, those who “know best” have again done their worst. While constantly claiming to be the guardians of democracy and the constitution, and respecters of the 2016 referendum result, diehard Remainers (who have never brought themselves to believe that their advice could have been rejected) have striven might and main ...

Following publication of this article, the Ministry has requested it to be noted that this supplied image is not necessarily representative of what the final house will look like, and it “probably won’t be that nice.” As part of today’s long-anticipated reset of the Government’s flagship KiwiBuild policy, Housing Minister ...

Over the next week or two we will be running three synopses of parts of the opening chapter of John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2016). The synopsis and commentary below is written by Phil Duncan. Marx began Capital not with a sweeping historical ...

The State Services Commission and Ombudsman have released another batch of OIA statistics, covering the last six months. Request volumes are up, and the core public service is generally handling them within the legal timeframe, though this may be because they've learned to extend rather than just ignore things. And ...

In 1994, I was editing an ambitious street mag called Planet, from a fabled office at at 309 Karangahape Road. The thirteenth issue of the magazine was published in the winter of that year and its cover embodied a particularly ambitious goal: the end of cannabis prohibition.I wanted to do ...

KiwiBuild was one of the Ardern government's core policies. The government would end the housing crisis and make housing affordable again by building 100,000 new homes. Of course, it didn't work out like that: targets weren't met, the houses they did build were in the wrong place, and the whole ...

As the climate crisis escalates, it is now obvious that we need to radically decarbonise our economy. The good news is that its looking easy and profitable for the energy sector. Wind is already cheaper than fossil fuels, and now solar is too:The levellised cost of solar PV has fallen ...

A Crown Asset? For reasons relating to its own political convenience, the Crown pretends to believe that “No one owns the water.” To say otherwise would re-vivify the promises contained in the Treaty of Waitangi – most particularly those pertaining to the power of the chiefs and their proprietary rights ...

Most people would say, no doubt, that they have a pretty good idea of what money is. They live with the reality of money every day. It is what is needed to buy the necessities of life and to maintain a decent standard of living. You get money, they would ...

The article below was an opinion piece that appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Te Awa (the NZ Green Party’s newsletter) and on the Greens website. In keeping with their policy of hostility to women defending women’s right to female-only spaces, Green bureaucrats have since removed the opinion piece. ...

Longer term readers may remember my complaining that, as a political scientist, it is burdensome to have non-political scientists wanting to engage me about politics. No layperson would think to approach an astrophysicist and lecture him/her on the finer details of quarks and black holes, but everybody with an opinion ...

Joining The Fight: Stevan Eldred-Grigg's argument for New Zealand staying out of the Second World War fails not only on the hard-headed grounds of preserving the country’s strategic and economic interests; and not just on the soft-hearted grounds of duty and loyalty to the nation that had given New Zealand ...

On September 27, School Strike 4 Climate will be striking for a future to pressure the government for meaningful climate action. This time, they've asked adults to join them. And now, Lincoln University and Victoria University of Wellington have signed on:Victoria University of Wellington has joined Lincoln University in endorsing ...

Another day, another constitutional outrage in the UK. This time, the government is saying that if parliament passes a law to stop Brexit before being prorogued, they may just ignore it:A senior cabinet minister has suggested Boris Johnson could defy legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit if it is forced ...

Dum-de-doo. Children across New Zealand have known him for generations as the lovable giraffe who tells them to exercise, hydrate and not to shove lit cigarettes up their nostrils. But a world renowned giraffe expert says we shouldn’t be getting attached to Life Education’s Harold the Giraffe, as he is ...

By Mike Hosking. Yesterday morning, I waltzed into work, and as I walked past the drones aggressively typing out news on the computers I’ve repeatedly asked to be moved further away from, I caught a glimpse of the words “climate change”, and noticed that suspiciously they weren’t in condescending quotation ...

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National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett spent the week claiming a serious cover-up in the Prime Minister's office. She used parliamentary privilege to name three of the Prime Minister's closest advisors who, she says, knew about the sexual assault ...

“The Game Animal Council is concerned that the Government’s second tranche of firearms legislation released today may contain unreasonable provisions that will unfairly impact hunters,” says Game Animal Council Chair Don Hammond. ...

Government policy work on the Carbon Zero bill highlights connections between climate change, carbon sequestration and agriculture. Water quality and allocation are also topical with the release of the Draft Policy Statement for Freshwater Management ...

DairyNZ Chief Executive Dr Tim Mackle is welcoming this afternoon’s announcement that consultation on Essential Freshwater has been extended by two weeks - but is calling on the Minister to go further. ...

Immigration New Zealand could really benefit from an large investment of money, comments Ms June Ranson, chair of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment (NZAMI) , a leading voice in the immigration sector. “Instead of spending $25m ...

In recent times there has been no shortage of commentary regarding whistleblowers, with the proposed amendments to the Protected Disclosures Act 2000. These are aimed at strengthening the protection available to whistleblowers in New Zealand. That ...

Gun Control NZ strongly welcomes the comprehensive gun law reform bill and calls on all political parties to support it. Gun Control NZ encourages New Zealanders to let their MPs know they support this Bill, submit to the Select Committee, and ...

Federated Farmers agrees with most of the steps by government to protect people from illegal or irresponsible firearms use. But concerns about pest control and the effectiveness of a register remain. ...

Today at Parliament the NZ Drug Foundation released Taking control of cannabis: A model for responsible regulation, a new report that shows how we can take back control of cannabis from organised crime. ...

Smoking kills 5,000 Kiwis each year, so any government policies to help reduce smoking are a good thing. However, the current approaches are not working nor will the proposed limit on flavoured e-liquid that Associate Minister Salesa announced on the news ...

A petition, that promises a significant and dramatic improvement for the New Zealand economy, was handed to Dr Deborah Russell, the MP for New Lynn today. The petition, signed by over 5,000 New Zealanders addresses our crippling level of debt as well ...

The New Zealand Medical Association welcomes the announcement of an Initial Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. We look forward to working with the newly appointed Chair Hayden Wano and the Commission. “It is vital that the steps to mental health ...

For anyone who even randomly follows the news will know that Hong Kong has been embroiled in demonstrations for months. These sometimes bloody demonstrations initially started as a result of a proposed Extradition Bill whereby there would be special ...

The release yesterday of Port Otago’s financial result for 2019, outlining a 12% increase and profits, including the news that the Chief Executive had received a $100,000 pay increase taking his remuneration to between $610,000-620,000, is like ...

“ I continue to be amazed at the incompetence of this Government when it comes to suicide prevention and mental health. Not only is this Government about to appoint a regional coroner who has a history of under reporting suicides amongst children ...

The Far North District Council (FNDC) and the Whangarei District Council (WDC) have lodged a joint appeal against the Northland Regional Council’s (NRC) omission of precautionary rules in its plan. [1] ...

The Chairman of the Authority, Judge Colin Doherty, has agreed to assist the Hong Kong Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) as a member of an international panel to provide high level advice to the IPCC in relation to its proposed "Thematic ...

“Putting families into motels is a temporary fix for desperate situations, rather than a sustainable solution to problems of poverty and homelessness,” says Scott Figenshow, Chief Executive of Community Housing Aotearoa. He was commenting on media ...

The New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPsS) says the current partial strike by 600 psychologists working in district health boards is a sign that temporary fixes to ongoing workforce shortages in the profession are not working. ...

New Zealand’s contribution to military operations in Malaya and Malaysia from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s will be commemorated in a national service held at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park at 11.00am on Monday 16 September. ...

The resignation of the President of the Labour Party over the sex pest allegations was inevitable. It was inevitable because of his appalling handling of the situation so far; and, because in situations like this where there has to be a “fall guy” ...

Yesterday Hon Grant Robertson Minister of Finance issued a welcome ‘clear directive’ in the press to ensure every Government considers the wellbeing of New Zealanders when creating future budgets . ...

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has written to Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters today urging that New Zealand condemn the Israeli Prime Minister’s planned annexation of vast tracts of the occupied West Bank of Palestine. ...

Today Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence (NPM) releases its next Te Arotahi paper calling on government to pay even closer attention to the issues of whānau and whakapapa within the criminal justice system. ...

“Technology adoption supports higher productivity growth, higher income growth and increased resources to pay for the things New Zealanders’ value. But the main problem facing New Zealand today isn’t too much technology, it’s not enough,” ...

Federated Farmers is asking nicely - please can the Government immediately extend the timeframe of the Essential Freshwater consultation so we can find a pathway forward that provides for both the health of the water, the health of people and the health ...

Youthline applauds the Government’s commitment to boosting mental health and addiction programmes and its intention to establish a Suicide Prevention Office but we urge swifter action in relation to implementing the programmes announced in the last budget ...

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An Auckland mayoral candidate has broken the internet* by announcing a plan for a monorail around the central city. Who is Craig Lord, and is he serious? Alex Braae spoke to him shortly after his campaign launch to find out.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The SpinoffMembers. ...

Antibiotics are becoming increasingly less effective, so what treatments can we use when the drugs stop working? With help from plant extracts, award-winning company HerbScience is set to breathe new life into how we treat bacterial infections.When Cynthia Hunefeld was just 10 years old, her father was hospitalised with a ...

For some, it symbolises the very backbone of New Zealand’s food culture. But can Kiwi onion dip survive after the factory that makes reduced cream is shut down?The Australian factory that makes Nestlé reduced cream, an integral ingredient in Kiwi onion dip, is shutting down, casting a shadow over the ...

Every year Matariki X brings Māori innovators and entrepreneurs together to share their experiences and inspire one another. Callaghan Innovation’s Vinnie Campbell says the Māori economy’s biggest strengths have nothing to do with money.This story was funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The ...

Today marks the start of Covering Climate Now. To launch the week, the New Zealand climate change minister, James Shaw, writes an open letter to participants in the School Strike 4 Climate ahead of their day of action later this month.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is thanks to ...

National’s new agriculture spokesperson finds himself in one of the party’s most important portfolios, at a time of dramatically increasing tensions in the sector. Will Todd Muller, a man regularly mentioned as a future leader contender, find common ground?Todd Muller’s obsession with politics began with an American encyclopaedia, which his ...

Miss June’s Bad Luck Party was recorded literally between hospital shifts, and their summer schedule includes both festival dates and their frontwoman’s graduation from medical school. We sat down with the band to ask just how, exactly, they’ve survived so far.The first years of life for Tāmaki Makaurau pop-punk quartet ...

The following four short extracts are from A City Possessed: The Christchurch Child Crèche Case by Lynley Hood, which has just been reprinted by Otago University Press. The book was first published in 2001 and won the Montana Medal for Non-Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. The controversial ...

Hamilton councillors have drawn headlines this year for being anti-science and insensitive to terror victims. At a mayoral debate on Wednesday, there were signs a campaign for change is gathering force.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The SpinoffMembers. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click ...

The Spinoff editor writes on the story that has engulfed NZ politics this week.One of the very few positive things to come out of a hideous week in New Zealand politics has been the sieving-out of the blinkered, partisan zealots. On one side, those who are ready to conjure up ...

In June 2018, Rawinia Higgins was appointed chairperson of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori. She’s the first female and the first te reo Māori second-language speaker to hold the role, and during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, she sat down with The Spinoff to talk about her ...

Compulsory New Zealand history in schools is an exciting opportunity but it’s crucial we’re critical of the stories we tell ourselves, writes Dr Aroha Harris. History is not simply an assemblage of facts and evidence. History is also the interrogation of those things.This may be unsettling news for some, including the ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Senior Research Fellow, Moral philosophy, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Law Futures Centre, Griffith University Argument is everywhere. From the kitchen table to the boardroom to the highest echelons of power, we all use argument to persuade, investigate new ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alastair Blanshard, Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of Queensland Comedy often succeeds where tragedy fails. Fangirls, the pop musical which premiered on Thursday night in Brisbane, is not the first drama to explore ...

On the 10th anniversary of the infamous “Imma let you finish” episode, Josie Adams reflects on what this moment revealed about both Taylor Swift and Kanye West.Cast your mind back a decade: 2009 DJ Earworm was still good, Barack Obama was sworn in as president of the US, Israeli ground ...

Analysis - An astounding week in politics has left Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern carrying responsibility for sorting out the mess the Labour Party is in over the sexual assault allegation, writes Peter Wilson. ...

Police Minister Stuart Nash has confirmed details of a new bill that will create a registry of guns, and new offences and penalties for illegal manufacture, trafficking or changing markings of firearms. ...

Charli XCX has just released her latest album, Charli. The futuristic musician is always looking ahead, and so are her fans. We’ve paired each star sign with their perfect Charli XCX song.Charli XCX burst onto the scene in 2012, when she co-wrote and performed electro-pop headbanger ‘I Love It’ with ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benedict Sheehy, Associate professor, University of Canberra British health-care conglomerate Bupa runs more nursing homes in Australia than anyone else. We now know its record in meeting basic standards of care is also worse than any other provider. This is more than ...

Fable is best remembered for the disastrous, over-the-top promises made by its designer Peter Molyneux. But maybe, Adam Goodall argues, we’re remembering it all wrong.“There is something I have to say. And I have to say it because I love making games.” So opens an October 2004 post on the ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Senior Research Fellow, Moral philosophy, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Law Futures Centre, Griffith University Argument is everywhere. From the kitchen table to the boardroom to the highest echelons of power, we all use argument to persuade, investigate new ...

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Native Son: The Writer’s Memoir by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House, $40)Stand by for a review from ...

Tara Ward delved into Māori TV’s impressive OnDemand catalogue and found some of the best TV taonga for your viewing pleasure. From lifestyle shows to documentaries, from current affairs to reality TV, Māori TV has an abundance of quality telly that celebrates and acknowledges the people, places and cultures of ...

A new poem by London-based poet Morgan Bach.Turning, hurtlingI march diligently to sunshine in the parkeverything bathed and turning golden.A woman breathes fire by the folly framing herlike a personal door to hell. Conkers are pitched from high boughsto break and give up fruit, a spire emergent from the baring ...

Simon Day learns about the history and power of Chinese five-spice. Both the origins of Chinese five-spice and the flavour itself are a little mysterious. My internet investigations revealed the powder’s name could be in reference to the use of five spices (although this often grows to six or seven), or ...

Revelations around alleged sexual assault by a Labour staffer and the party inquiry into his behaviour have dominated the week. Alex Casey and Mihi Forbes join Gone By Lunchtime to survey the damage.Alex Casey, author of the Spinoff feature published on Monday, “A Labour volunteer alleged a violent sexual assault ...

In the fourth episode of Actually Interesting, The Spinoff’s monthly podcast exploring the effect AI has on our lives, Russell Brown speaks to Ana Arriola, general manager and partner at Microsoft AI and Research, about ethics and transparency in tech.Subscribe to Actually Interesting via iTunes or listen on the player below.To download this ...

Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Labour Party sexual assault allegations Andrea Vance (Stuff): How to make the Labour abuse scandal ...

Toi Kai Rākau Iti, who is running in the Eastern Bay of Plenty Kohi Māori constituency, encounters an unlikely channel of youth engagement.In te ao Māori you’re always looking for tohu, or symbols. They guide you through uncertain territory and help you make sense of the world. The arrival of ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tomer Ventura, Senior Lecturer, School of Science and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast The creation of all-male or all-female groups of animals, known as monosex populations, has become a potentially useful approach in aquaculture and livestock rearing. Researchers and those in ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Holmes, Director, Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Monash University Predictably, both major political parties are resisting calls this week for a parliamentary conscience vote to declare a climate emergency in Australia. The resistance is unsurprising because both the Coalition and Labor ...

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Shi, Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University If the Religious Discrimination Bill passes into law, women may find it harder to get an abortion. That’s because health practitioners with an objection to performing the procedure on religious grounds ...